The bottom line: countries cope with changing climates far better with deep pockets than with empty ones. And as long as voters have trouble filling theirs, climate change is going to take a back seat on the electoral agenda. The Canadian government should stay the course, and not be deterred by the naysayers.

The UK’s first commercial scale CCS facility – a plant at a colliery in Yorkshire that would capture carbon and then pump it for burial in old gas-wells under the North Sea – has itself gone under after failing to raise the £635 million needed to fund its construction.